Mental Illness Awareness Week ended yesterday so I’m late with this post. But it’s something that should have received more attention than it did this year. In 22 years at The Indianapolis Star and Indianapolis News I’d written many times about mental health issues, anything from agoraphobia and sexual dysfunction to schizophrenia and other major psychoses. This may seem like I’m ranking mental health concerns and that may be offensive to some people in an age when all lived experiences are to be considered equal, but I’m only thinking of the relative likelihood for a sufferer to live an independent life. No mental health concern is small if you’re the one dealing with it.
Covid-19 brought a lot of attention to the increase in anxiety and depression among many Americans, including many stories from late 2020 through early 2021 that noted the increased demand for mental health services. A survey done by the American Psychological Association this spring found a 60 percent increase in people seeking treatment for depression, for example. See article here.
People have benefitted from mental health treatment, whether one-on-one, group therapy, or medication. Or a combination of the above, including supplementation by “bibliotherapy,” a term I learned recently. That just means reading lots of material on mental health diagnoses and treatment, which usually will advance two theses: One, that you are not alone with your concerns. And, two, that you should practice specific exercises and skills to get past the problems that are holding you back. This is especially true of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, as well as the related field of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, an innovation often credited to Steven Hayes. This latter specialty is distinctive in that it adds commitment to personal values, not just goals, as part of its therapy regimen.
Largely on the outs is psychoanalysis and long-term depth psychiatry, though. I’m personally affected by Mental Illness Awareness Week because of the clear mistreatment both my father and oldest brother were subjected to many years ago at the hands of what passed for good psychiatric practice at the time. I can’t go into any of that here because this post is not meant to be about me, but after decades when I could not write about anything so personal or even discuss it with friends, I was able in 2019 to publish a short article in Asylum, the Radical [British] Mental Health magazine, which is not available online, and a somewhat longer piece about my brother’s tragic experiences that was published last year in The Arkansas Review. The latter article can be found here.
I fully support destigmatization and improved access to mental health services, but I do want to note that mental health consumers will have to be their own best advocates because things do wrong at times. For the most serious cases, then, parents, spouses, partners and/or friends will have to be smart as well as concerned.
I said above that I wrote many mental health stories while working in daily journalism. That’s true, but the most important story was the one that got away. I had a family that wanted to go on the record with a story of psychiatric abuse of a non-sexual nature. I mention “non-sexual” because there had been a spate of stories nationally about sexual abuse of mental health patients at the time. I believed then, and believe now, that instances of such abuse are rare. It’s what gives the media a bad name in some circles – we lean toward sensational stories as much or more than those meant to enhance the public good (which itself can be a contested concept because we don’t all agree on just what is the public good).
I told my immediate supervisor about the possible story and she was enthusiastic that I move forward. But I had to make clear that this would not be a story of sexual abuse, and it took a while for this to sink in, I guess. Her reaction became one of “Oh,” and she said she’d discuss it with her supervisor. That supervisor soon got in touch with me and she, too, was excited to hear I had a source who would go on record to talk about sexual abuse by a psychiatrist. “No,” I had to correct her. It was non-sexual abuse. The prospect of such a story was kicked upstairs once more, where the project was cancelled.
Journalists and well-informed media consumers will question whether The Indianapolis Star would really have published the name of a sexual abuse survivor in the early 2000s – it most certainly would not have – so the paper would have had me suppress the victim’s name while continuing with the story. It’s only a secondary point of mine that the paper was interested in a bit of sensationalism, though. My main point is that a story of psychiatric abuse per se could not be published.
So, not all interactions with mental health professionals are successful. But the same is true for cancer treatment, or heart transplants, or even Covid vaccines. (There’s a current hot topic for you! I’ve had both Pfizer shots and am scheduled for a booster; I have a stash of KN-95 masks for when I’m shopping or in very close quarters. I think vaccinations and wearing masks are “best practices,” but I know the science is all based on statistical probability. There are no guarantees.)
In honor of Mental Illness Awareness Week here are some useful contacts.
The American Psychological Association Psychologist Locator https://locator.apa.org/ (you may have to cut and paste link into a new tab)
National Alliance on Mental Illness contact form and Helpline https://www.nami.org/contact-us
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255
Gnawbone: feel free to share this and any post from the Archives